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Unfriended
Unfriended (originally titled Cybernatural and Offline) is a 2014 american "found footage" film directed by Levan Gabriadze, written by Nelson Greaves and produced by Timur Bekmambetov and Greaves. The film premiered at the Fantasia Festival on July 20, 2014, and at SXSW on March 13, 2015, and was officially released to theaters on April 17, 2015. The main plot is Blaire Lily (Shelley Hennig), along with many of her friends, being terrorized and haunted by an anonymous person (Laura Barns) who has paranormal powers and wants nothing but blood. The film received mixed to positive reviews from critics, with a rating on Rotten Tomatoes being 63% ("Fresh"), based on 163 reviews, with an average rating of 5.9/10. On Metacritic, the film has a score of 59 out of 100, based on 30 critics, indicating that it has "mixed or average reviews". A sequel, named Unfriended: Dark Web, was released on July 20th, 2018. Plot On April 12, 2013, In Fresno, California, a humiliating video of high school student Laura Barns is uploaded to Facebook. After the video causes her to endure widespread mockery, ridicule, and death threats from people in the school, and across the world, she promptly commits suicide. One year later, on April 12, 2014, Blaire Lily is watching the video of Laura committing suicide on LiveLeak - where she is seen pointing a gun at her head and shooting herself, despite nearby students begging her not to pull the trigger and to stop. She is then contacted over Skype by her boyfriend, Mitch Roussel (played by Moses Jacob Storm), and they begin to have cyber sex before being interrupted by their three friends; Jess Felton (played by Renee Olstead), Ken Smith (played by Jacob Wysocki), and Adam Sewell (played by Will Peltz), as well as a Skype profile using the default "faceless" avatar (billie227) who claims to be Laura. The group attempts to get rid of the user to no avail. They assume that Val Rommel (played by Courtney Halverson) is pranking them. When she is invited to the group chat, Jess's Facebook is updated with photos of Val drinking and smoking marijuana at a party (with the album appropriately titled, "VAL GETS SHITFACED!!"). Jess claims she did not post the photos and attempts to delete them, but they continue to reappear. After finally deleting them, the photos mysteriously get posted on Adam's account. Afterwards, after much arguing, billie227 takes credit for the current happenings and sends Val a picture of her boobs that she showed to someone on Snapchat. Val eventually gets scared and calls 911 to report abuse and signs off. As everyone freaks out, Laura e-mails Blaire (which she cannot forward to her friends) a link to an Instagram photo of a message Laura sent Val a year earlier, begging her to remove the embarrassing video forever. Val cruelly rejects the plea and told Laura to kill herself. Multiple Instagram users start flooding the image with hate (it is unknown how these users found these images, although it's probable Laura posted it on Val's Instagram). Val is suddenly brought back in the chat suddenly. Val is seen silently standing motionless in her bathroom (as if a statue or a profile picture), next to an open bottle of bleach and a smashed mirror. Concerned with what is happening, Blaire calls Val to check on her, and one can see her phone vibrating during this "statue" phase. She suddenly gets knocked over and her computer is abruptly knocked to the ground. The police arrive and start shouting out police codes. It is revealed that the police have ruled her death a suicide. Next, Laura plays a "game" with the group, and sends them an application disguised as an Anti-Trojan. This briefly gets rid of Laura and the group attempts to call 911, but it now turns out that Laura is on the line and says, "Don't hang up." Next, Laura comes back and resurfaces as a camera view that is revealed to be in Ken's room. Although it is never seen, Ken sees whatever is there and is absolutely horrified by it. After his camera starts stuttering, a horrific image of him having his hand forcefully shoved into the blender is shown. Being in excruciating pain, he smashes the glass portion of the blender and uses the blades to slit his throat, killing him instantly. As her friends freak out and cry, Laura forces the four remaining friends to play a game called Never Have I Ever, threatening to end the losers life. Throughout the game, Laura reveals dark secrets that put everyone's friendships in jeopardy. Adam eventually becomes enraged and uses the game to reveal that Blaire is not a virgin, because she has had sex with Adam twice. Eventually Mitch gets furious with Adam and forces him to reveal that he gave a girl named Ashley roofies at a party and raped her while she was unconscious, then later forced her to get an abortion when he found out she was pregnant. Blaire and Adam eventually have two pieces of paper come out of their printers but refuse to show what it says. Mitch, who is furious, threatens to sign off and have Laura kill him. Blaire, in a terrified state, reveals the note that says "If you reveal this note, Adam will die." (but immediately regrets it) and Adam shoots himself in the face, revealing his note that says "If you reveal this note, Blaire will die". There are only three friends left, and Laura now demands to know who had defaced her grave. After Jess refuses to admit she was the one who vandalized it, Laura turns all of the lights off in her house. Jess, scared out of her mind, decides to hide in the bathroom as Blaire contacts people on Chat Roulette. She successfully gets someone to call the police. However, right after this, Jess's video feed disconnects. Seconds later, she is shown choking to death on her blisteringly hot electric hair straightener (so hot that it is on fire.) There are now only two friends left and Laura now demands to know who is the one who uploaded the video. After Laura privately messages Blaire on Facebook, asking who posted the video, she admits that it was Mitch who posted the video. Mitch suddenly dies by shoving his hunting knife deeply into his eye, leaving Blaire alone in the chatroom. Blaire begins to have a panic attack, and Laura says she is thankful for all the help, but she must admit to one more thing before she is free to go. When Laura counts down, she screams, not knowing what to say, and gets very desperate and tries to show her past photos of when the two were friends. Laura then uploads the humiliating video which caused all of the events to happen in the first place onto Blaire's Facebook account, but, in this version, Blaire is revealed to be the cameraman. The video is flooded with hate comments, and billie227 signs off. Blaire is in a state of shock, but her bedroom door creaks open. Silhouetted hands appear out of nowhere and slam Blaire's Macbook shut, and Laura's vengeful ghost suddenly appears as Blaire lets out a final "NO!!". Sequel Blumhouse Productions confirmed that there is a sequel in the works, called Unfriended 2, scheduled to be released in 2018. Soundtrack *"Lost Cities" - Zoe Chatfield, Athena Demaille-Von Schmidt, Emily Gregonis *"We On" - B. Cooper *"Forever" - Rickie Page *"How You Lie, Lie, Lie" - Connie Conway *"Ghost In My Head" - Eldar Tagiev, Tommy Simpson, Tiffany Wan Trivia *This movie is similar to the movie "The Den", a 2013 film which has a similar style and plot. In this movie, a girl is on her Macbook, shown via a screencast on a social website called The Den, and her goal is to meet as many strangers as possible. However she begins a chat with someone who is brutally murdered live on the webcam, and is stalked and traumatized by the mysterious killer, and later hunted down by him. However, unlike Unfriended, some of the film takes place outside of the Macbook screen. *All of the Facebook accounts shown in this film are actual Facebook accounts. *There are hundreds of real products and websites in this film, including Facebook, YouTube, LiveLeak, Tumblr, Google, Gmail, ChatRoulette, Skype, Spotify, ICQ, Google Chrome, Mac OS X, Windows XP, and more. *The "Unexplained Forums" website is a spoof of the website Unexplained Mysteries Forums. *Unfriended was inspired by a real life experience Nelson Greaves had. He had received a spam email from an old friend, however, the friend in question had recently committed suicide. Greaves said "It was so emotionally troubling for me. It's such a simple thing but it made me stop and say, 'This is something out of a scary movie.'." *In late 2017, a sequel was announced titled "Unfriended: Game Night" and would be a stand alone film, starting a completely new story. Cast * Heather Sossaman as Laura Barns * Courtney Halverson as Val Rommel * Jacob Wysobski as Ken Smith * Will Peltz as Adam Sewell * Renee Olstead as Jess Felton * Moses Jacob Storm as Mitch Roussel * Shelley Hennig as Blaire Lily * Danielle Harris as Nancy Thompson